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Update: Mode 7's Paul Kilduff-Taylor owned up to the marketing stunt in a blog post this morning, and explained the reasoning behind it a bit. "It’s incredibly hard to get attention for a smaller game these days, especially for a new platform release of something which already exists, so I felt like I had to push the boat out a little bit," he writes.

As manufactured controversies go, this one leaves a lot to be skeptical of. As clever marketing plans go, though, it's an interesting public performance that touches on some real issues in modern gaming.

The first mention of a game called Tokyo 41 anywhere on the Internet seems to have come from a Twitter account belonging to alleged developer Mark Followill. On the same day the account was created, Followill replied to Tokyo 42 publisher Mode 7 Games with a couple of CGA-style screenshots of Tokyo 41. Those shots heavily resemble Tokyo 42's isometric shooter gameplay despite Tokyo 41 allegedly being originally published in 1987. "It is clear that this game is strongly similar to my game Tokyo 41 which you are clearly aware of," Followill tweeted.

Over the weekend, Followill started up a WordPress blog and posted more details about Tokyo 41's alleged history, including a video of an alleged updated and emulated version of the game. Followill writes of his frustration trying to get Mode 7 to acknowledge its debt to his earlier game:

Despite many efforts to contact the publishers and developers I have received no meaningful reply. The press has been silent on this matter, as 1980’s British game development has been forgotten amongst the corporatisation of computer games, a trend which drove me out of this vibrant creative area at the time.

The legal protections for computer games are very poor, and my partner at Omen Barn Michael Hernandez has told me he is not interested in pursuing any claim against the perpetrators of this. Personally I would welcome any legal advice on this matter – I know there are many on the internet with far greater expertise than I.

Mode 7 Games' Paul Kilduff-Taylor is publicly calling Tokyo 41 "blatantly fake" on Twitter, speculating that it could be "some kind of elaborate trademark troll." This morning, he wrote that he's "not commenting on THE THING currently due to ADVICE but am enjoying all of your viewpoints."

The "developer" speaks

How can Tokyo 41 have existed for 30 years without any mention by the hordes of classic PC gaming fans on the Internet (or contemporary attention from the late '80s gaming press)? "We sold games in local shops only and so they are not well recorded, with little information available on the internet," Followill said in response to an e-mail from Ars Technica. "As I have said, I am looking to promote the work of such developers as ourselves if people will only listen to what I am actually saying instead of misquoting me etc."

Followill tells Ars he formed the Kent-based developer omen Barn (yes, that's company styling) in the late '80s with partner Michael Hernandez. The company was "named after a barn near our houses which we found to be particularly ominous in nature," he says. "Barn is capitalised there as it was a big barn, also this was the fashion at the time." Tokyo 41 was "inspired by my love of Tokyo and Japan which I established as a young boy, visiting the blossom season and having adventures with police," Followill says.

While the ZX Spectrum version is lost forever, Followill says, the footage he posted "is based on an emulated version OF THE PC VERSION with MODERN SOUND And some changes. I am using basic hardware emulation techniques in a C++ wrapper I have written myself in order to run the DOS CGA version of the game, then on top of this I have added elements to present the game to a modern audience."

That supposedly explains why the video footage runs with better graphics and sound than would seemingly be possible on a 1987-era PC. But Followill says he can't share the emulated ROM publicly "for obvious reasons - who knows what could happen to it as soon as it was released. After this controversy I do not want more exposure for the game."

An expert hoax

While the parties involved are doing a great job of staying in character, it should hopefully be clear by now that the story surrounding Tokyo 41 is an elaborate marketing hoax. The lack of any sort of contemporary paper trail or Internet memory of the game seems utterly implausible for a game that a Mode 7 developer would know enough about to steal. The "emulated" footage also seems much too sophisticated for a late '80s PC release in a number of ways ("some changes" notwithstanding).

Followill's relatively recent Internet presence and the timing of his accusations are suspicious enough, but if there's still any doubt, the end of Followill's e-mail to Ars reads like thinly veiled marketing copy for the "copycat" game he's attacking. "There is a lot of focus on me now and I will say that I only want recognition for my work, not to intefere [sic] with the forthcoming PlayStation 4 release of Tokyo 42 tomorrow, which as a fan of games I am looking forward to even though it will be bittersweet for me." While some in the indie game scene are playingalong with the story on Twitter, many seem to be in on the joke.

Further Reading

More than that, though, we respect the sheer audacity of play-acting this kind of scandal in such a blatant and public way, with tongue firmly in cheek. Yes, you could argue the Tokyo 41 hoax makes light of the very real issue of game cloning, which canbedevastating when it actually happens to developers. There's also a thin line between playful marketing hoax and actively misleading the public that Tokyo 41 straddles uncomfortably.

In many ways, though, the manufactured controversy resembles an alternate reality game, adding a layer of "real world" fiction that places layers on top of the self-contained in-game world. When a marketing plan is put together with such cleverness and care, it's hard not to be charmed.

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Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

Yeah not really the best idea as a marketing stunt for what is otherwise a good game but the games scene is pretty crowded these days, must be getting desperate.

Also "press any key to start" on a zx spectrum computer game from the 80's I don't recall being a thing or on a PC either in general, it was the Japanese consoles that made that a thing which some PC games would later emulate like commander keen in the 90's.

I've seen this claim both from the story author as well as in the comment section already and it seems entirely ridiculous to me:

a) The colors in the video/screenshots are *exactly* one of the two CGA color palettes (white, cyan, magenta).b) I haven't counted the dots, but the resolution looks to be about 320x200 - exactly the CGA graphics resolution of the time.c) Most likely the scrolling by panning across a statically-drawn image with valid paths and events laid out for the player procedurally. Scrolling of this nature was relatively straightforward and reasonably fast with PCs of the era.

Bottom line: as someone who spent an enormous amount of time messing with the graphics (in BASIC and assembler) on IBM PC-class machines of that era I see nothing in the video or screenshots that could not have originally been developed on a mid-1980's era IBM PC fitted with a CGA card.

Regardless of what my opinion or experience is, however, there's a reasonably easy test: if the purported _Tokyo 41_ author shows the source code of the original game (presumably in some mix of Pascal, C, or assembler), it would be pretty straightforward to validate when the game was originally written.

"So I tied an onion to my belt ... which was the style at the time." I'll buy whatever they're selling for quarter. See, nickels used to have bees on 'em. 'Gimme five bees for a quarter!" we used to say.

I've seen this claim both from the story author as well as in the comment section already and it seems entirely ridiculous to me:

a) The colors in the video/screenshots are *exactly* one of the two CGA color palettes (white, cyan, magenta).b) I haven't counted the dots, but the resolution looks to be about 320x200 - exactly the CGA graphics resolution of the time.c) Most likely the scrolling by panning across a statically-drawn image with valid paths and events laid out for the player procedurally. Scrolling of this nature was relatively straightforward and reasonably fast with PCs of the era.

Bottom line: as someone who spent an enormous amount of time messing with the graphics (in BASIC and assembler) on IBM PC-class machines of that era I see nothing in the video or screenshots that could not have originally been developed on a mid-1980's era IBM PC fitted with a CGA card.

Regardless of what my opinion or experience is, however, there's a reasonably easy test: if the purported _Tokyo 41_ author shows the source code of the original game (presumably in some mix of Pascal, C, or assembler), it would be pretty straightforward to validate when the game was originally written.

There is no way that a game like this would have been playable given the limitations of CGA architecture. The 16KB of video memory was there for pretty much whatever was on display. There was no compression, and unique graphics assets had to go over a slow 8-bit ISA bus -- and there are a lot of unique graphics assets in the video.

I've seen this claim both from the story author as well as in the comment section already and it seems entirely ridiculous to me:

a) The colors in the video/screenshots are *exactly* one of the two CGA color palettes (white, cyan, magenta).b) I haven't counted the dots, but the resolution looks to be about 320x200 - exactly the CGA graphics resolution of the time.c) Most likely the scrolling by panning across a statically-drawn image with valid paths and events laid out for the player procedurally. Scrolling of this nature was relatively straightforward and reasonably fast with PCs of the era.

Bottom line: as someone who spent an enormous amount of time messing with the graphics (in BASIC and assembler) on IBM PC-class machines of that era I see nothing in the video or screenshots that could not have originally been developed on a mid-1980's era IBM PC fitted with a CGA card.

Regardless of what my opinion or experience is, however, there's a reasonably easy test: if the purported _Tokyo 41_ author shows the source code of the original game (presumably in some mix of Pascal, C, or assembler), it would be pretty straightforward to validate when the game was originally written.

There is no way that a game like this would have been playable given the limitations of CGA architecture. The 16KB of video memory was there for pretty much whatever was on display. There was no compression, and unique graphics assets had to go over a slow 8-bit ISA bus -- and there are a lot of unique graphics assets in the video.

It would have been a stutter-fest.

It's a pretty sweet marketing campaign though.

The assets themselves wouldn't be going over the ISA bus though - they'd be getting blitted to the screen, along with everything else.

Which CGA was way too slow for, especially since you had to do everything during the vertical blank interval, which means at best you'd be double-buffering everything, and that leads back to the slowness of trying to blit 16KB of data during a really tiny timeslice. Also, CGA required that you poll for VBI, and that really eats into your CPU budget for doing all the other stuff too.

Any game that was designed in 1987 to take full advantage of the higher-end PCs of the era would certainly not have used CGA graphics; EGA would have been much more likely.

I do give them props for an attempt at clever marketing by drumming up fake controversy, but at the end of the day I find that tactic very offputting.

For comparison's sake, here's Commander Keen 1, which came out in 1991 and targeted EGA and much faster computers that were even available in 1987:

No, there's just no way. Nobody was releasing Timex Sinclair or 4-color CGA games in 1987. EGA came out in 1984, and by '87, the dev would have been writing it as 16 color EGA game, with possibly a 4-color CGA mode.

As to the Sinclair - I can't imagine a game like this on the Sinclair - the biggest problem is that this used the mouse cursor to aim the player's gun. There was simply nothing like that on the Sinclair. (Turns out I'm wrong - there is a mouse that plugs into the expansion port. http://www.worldofspectrum.org/faq/refe ... herals.htm)

Now if you told me that someone took a modern game and used a "CGA filter" to render it and make it look like that - I'd totally believe you; I've seen some similar filters in games, even an ASCII Art filter in one game.

Oh, and I just noticed this. At 41 seconds: Building 42.

As an attempt to troll for publicity - it's pretty cool. After all, it doesn't even need to be believable to work; the mere fact that we're talking about it is enough. (It's just too bad the actual game isn't that good.)

Also in 1987, mice in IBM PCs, were more rare than a hard disk. And those were so rare that afaik I was the only non-business-entity to have one in my whole island in that year.

See that Lemmings in 1991 still considers the mouse an optional accessory, even with the triumph of Windows.

Also a developer that created a game in 1987 would've by now at least said in someplace "I created this" and possibly uploaded it as freeware or public domain or whatever. Heck I even opensourced the scripts I made while being 12 years old .

I don't know why they would've done this market campaign, but its shadyness just prevents me from buying the intended product. Next time, make a homage, not a fake "I've been stolen" cry, that damages views on real software theft.

Edit: corrected some typos.

Edit2: Not a single game of the 80s I know of, even from more powerful hardware with bitmap blitters, sprites, so on, would've been able to manage so many objects in screen as are shown. Remember, the IBM PC was a business machine, until the arrive of 386 and VGA it was pretty much laughable compared with the competition.

Had a PC clone in 1988, EGA Graphics. Many many games were still CGA only at that time. EGA was expensive, required 'digital' monitors and the programming documentation for them was different and it had some of the same issues as CGA; way to slow unless you pulled all kinds of tricks which took time for developers to do. (Keeping in mind, while you could communicate with developers around the world it wasn't a common thing and basement level development with little outside would contact was common).

Pixel count matters; I'm not going to count them in the video, but it did look a little high. Color: ugly as usual; may not match peoples memory as it renders quite different on actual analog displays. (There were ways to take advantage of that fact for instance).

Bottom line: as someone who spent an enormous amount of time messing with the graphics (in BASIC and assembler) on IBM PC-class machines of that era I see nothing in the video or screenshots that could not have originally been developed on a mid-1980's era IBM PC fitted with a CGA card.

It's not that it couldn't have, but that it wouldn't have. We live in a different society than we did in 1980, and the changes to our design sensibilities are evident in everything we create, including homages to our shared history.

Had a PC clone in 1988, EGA Graphics. Many many games were still CGA only at that time. EGA was expensive, required 'digital' monitors and the programming documentation for them was different and it had some of the same issues as CGA; way to slow unless you pulled all kinds of tricks which took time for developers to do. (Keeping in mind, while you could communicate with developers around the world it wasn't a common thing and basement level development with little outside would contact was common).

Pixel count matters; I'm not going to count them in the video, but it did look a little high. Color: ugly as usual; may not match peoples memory as it renders quite different on actual analog displays. (There were ways to take advantage of that fact for instance).

FYI, EGA used the same monitor protocol as CGA, they just used 3 extra pins for the second level of color that were unused in CGA monitors. That way, you could reuse CGA monitors, and to some extent, EGA monitors in CGA cards. Both were digital TTL 5v.

Had a PC clone in 1988, EGA Graphics. Many many games were still CGA only at that time. EGA was expensive, required 'digital' monitors and the programming documentation for them was different and it had some of the same issues as CGA; way to slow unless you pulled all kinds of tricks which took time for developers to do. (Keeping in mind, while you could communicate with developers around the world it wasn't a common thing and basement level development with little outside would contact was common).

Pixel count matters; I'm not going to count them in the video, but it did look a little high. Color: ugly as usual; may not match peoples memory as it renders quite different on actual analog displays. (There were ways to take advantage of that fact for instance).

FYI, EGA used the same monitor protocol as CGA, they just used 3 extra pins for the second level of color that were unused in CGA monitors. That way, you could reuse CGA monitors, and to some extent, EGA monitors in CGA cards. Both were digital TTL 5v.

Nope, same number of pins on both. Both monitors and cards had 16 colors for text, but CGA only allowed for 8 background colors. IIRC, if you used a bright background bit, it would blink the text in that cell.

I've seen this claim both from the story author as well as in the comment section already and it seems entirely ridiculous to me:

a) The colors in the video/screenshots are *exactly* one of the two CGA color palettes (white, cyan, magenta).b) I haven't counted the dots, but the resolution looks to be about 320x200 - exactly the CGA graphics resolution of the time.c) Most likely the scrolling by panning across a statically-drawn image with valid paths and events laid out for the player procedurally. Scrolling of this nature was relatively straightforward and reasonably fast with PCs of the era.

Bottom line: as someone who spent an enormous amount of time messing with the graphics (in BASIC and assembler) on IBM PC-class machines of that era I see nothing in the video or screenshots that could not have originally been developed on a mid-1980's era IBM PC fitted with a CGA card.

Visually, yes, it's spot on. If we just had static screenshots it would hold up a lot better. But the problems are immediately apparent as soon as everything is in motion.

1. There's WAY too much moving on the screen at any given time, and the movement is far too fluid. The ventilation fans in the warehouses alone are something you wouldn't have seen moving at that scale in that type of game from the era. The complexity and fluidity of the intro barn logo animation itself was beyond what you would have seen presented on a ~8MHz 8088.

Hmmm, I don't see any problems with this being a CGI PC version of the game. Sure you might have only gotten something like 20fps or less at the time, but that was normal back then.

My problem is with the game playNothing odd about that either for a PC game of that era, BUT considering it's supposed to be a ZX port, the gameplay just seems too intense for using a joystick to control it. It just seems uncharacteristic to have a "twin stick" type of gameplay for that era.